LeBron James carried the Cavaliers to the finals but may want to play for a team that has a better chance at winning the championship.
Photograph: David Richard/USA Today Sports

In some respects you should feel sorry for the Golden State Warriors. They’ve just won a second straight championship, their third in four years, and yet they’re nowhere near the biggest story in the league. Enjoy the parade, Warriors, just don’t be offended if our attentions are elsewhere: LeBron James may well be on the move.

After all, someone wins the NBA finals every year – and sometimes it’s not even the Warriors. But it’s a much rarer occasion that the Best Player In The Game (And Possibly Of All Time) is facing free agency.

James, understandably for a player of his talents, has always had an eye on his legacy so he places great importance on setting himself up to win further championships. How exactly he plans to do that is still unclear. Let’s explore his likely landing places.

1) Houston Rockets

If James is looking for a team that can automatically challenge the ridiculously stacked Golden State Warriors, the Rockets are the obvious option. While it’s going to take some financial maneuvering that would boggle the mind of even the most devoted NBA capologist, there’s a possibility that the Rockets could add James to a core that contains James Harden, most likely the MVP of the 2017-18 regular season and Chris Paul, a Hall of Fame caliber point guard. Keep in mind that before Paul’s injury, the Rockets were in position to knock the Warriors out of the playoffs this year. Adding James would instantly make Houston the biggest threat to the Warriors’ reign, well, ever.

Pro: James’s best chance to win a championship immediately.Con: A continued, never-ending discussion about how James only won by pairing up with already established superstars.

2) Philadelphia 76ers

While it’s fun to imagine James with the Rockets’ All-Star cast, there is an intriguing option that doesn’t effectively render the entire Eastern Conference irrelevant. The 76ers have spent the last few years building a young, talented team by ignoring the on-court product and building through the draft. James’s best long-term chances may be signing with a team that already has two potential superstars in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Can you imagine this team growing under the wing of James? Celtics fans can, and are, cringing right now.

Pro: Points for doing it “the right way.”Con: Those points won’t count against the Warriors in the 2019 NBA finals. Questions over whether James And Simmons’s games complement each other.

3) Los Angeles Lakers

LeBron has been flirting with the Lakers, the marquee franchise in the league, for a long time. Long enough, in fact, for the Lakers to have time to set up their payroll in advance to give them space to sign two max free-agents this summer. They’ve been pretty lousy recently, but if the Lakers add James and, say, Oklahoma City Thunder’s Paul George, they would be transformed. The Lakers hope that their place in basketball history, not to mention their status as the ultimate nexus of celebrity culture and sports, is enough to attract James, because after all that planning, no other player will seem worth it.

Pro: The Lakers offer an ideal situation (and convenient location) for the game’s biggest celebrity.Con: Playing against the Warriors and the Rockets in the playoffs every year.

4) Cleveland Cavaliers

It’s not entirely impossible that James sticks with the Cavaliers, and he has spoken about the problem of uprooting his young family. But a departure from Ohio is more than likely. “At the end of the day I came back because I felt I had unfinished business,” James has said, “to win a championship with the team we had two years ago, it’s something I’ll always remember.” That certainly reads like a “goodbye” on this end. If he thought that he could win another championship in Cleveland, maybe he would stay, but it would have to be a very different team than the one he dragged to the finals this time around.

Pro: Cleveland can offer him more money than any other team.Con: Been there, done that. The team as it stands won’t threaten the Warriors anytime soon.

5) Miami Heat

Now we’re in touching distance of the realms of fantasy. If history is repeating again, why not a return to Miami? After all, there was a certain point during James’s first trip into free agency whenMiami seemed like an unlikely destination. But then all of a sudden came the Chris Bosh signing and, soon after that, the Decision. Does Pat Riley have some sort of sneaky, hidden plan in his back pocket? (If not, then this isn’t happening.)

Pro: They probably kept his parking space.Con: Familiarity and warm winters is about all they can offer.

6) San Antonio Spurs

There are no bigger winners in the NBA than Gregg Popovich’s San Antonio Spurs. There’s a good chance that the Spurs are parting ways with their star player Kawhi Leonard, and it’s hard to think of a better replacement than the biggest NBA star on the planet. James and Popovich have expressed their admiration for each other down the years, and the veteran coach is reportedly interested in discussing a deal. Still, this whole set up feels weird, it’s not how the Spurs do things.

Pro: James, making the case as the best player in NBA history, would be playing with Popovich, making the case as the best coach in NBA history.Con: It would never be “his” team.

7) Boston Celtics

No, seriously, James reportedly has a meeting set with the Boston Celtics over the summer. It’s really, really, really hard to see how exactly the Celtics would figure out how to fit James into their plans, especially since they just traded for Kyrie Irving last summer after Irving got sick of being in James’s shadow. Still, can’t blame the Celtics for taking a meeting with their long-time nemesis.

Pro: Would be an incredibly good basketball team if they could somehow make sense of it.Con: Not even coaching wizard Brad Stevens could make sense of it.

8) Golden State Warriors

There has also been talk about James taking a meeting with the Warriors. So there’s that. It’s not clear who would stay and who would go if they brought James in, although Draymond Green has gone on record as saying he’d be out if that were to happen. They would remain title favorites though - just a theory.